Virginia GOP House Candidate Opposed Criminalizing Spousal Rape

A Republican who recently announced he was running for Congress in Virginia opposed making spousal rape a crime years earlier.

The candidate, state Sen. Richard “Dick” Black, argued against criminalizing spousal rape saying it’s highly difficult to convict a husband of rape against his wife “when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, there’s no injury and so forth or anything.”

In 2002, when the Virginia general assembly repealed legislation that exempted spouses from prosecution for rape, Black questioned if it’s even possible to successfully prosecute a husband if he were to rape his wife.

That’s not all though. As Mother Jones, which flagged Black’s comments on Wednesday, notes, Black has also referred to emergency contraception as “baby pesticide,” called abortion in America a “Holocaust” and opposed putting a statue of Abraham Lincoln at a location in Richmond, Virginia that was previously a Confederate site, according to Mother Jones.